Jackson's stable was by far the cleanest. Ramage peered along the barrel of the gun and saw that it was aimed at the centre of the killing ground. The next stable was not quite as clean but, as the gun captain commented, it was probably the first and almost certainly the last time that it had been "mucked out". The man's use of the phrase showed Ramage that he was a countryman; probably a farm labourer swept up by the pressgang. Or maybe, overwhelmed by debt, he had volunteered, knowing that the Navy protected him from the bailiffs for civil debts of twenty pounds or less.
As he checked the last gun, Ramage decided they were all sited in the best position: the long stretch of quay was wide enough to make a perfect area for the Saracens to straggle over as they made their way into the town, and thus offer perfect targets for the carronades.
Nearly two hundred seamen and the Marines in the houses took longer to inspect but Ramage found the men had selected the best firing positions. All were prepared to quit the houses and attack the Saracens with cutlasses and pikes as soon as they had fired their muskets.
Ramage went back up to the castle well satisfied with what he had seen. Rennick obviously knew his job and both Kenton and Martin were making sure that the men behaved themselves in the town and did not wheedle wine out of their hosts. "I've told 'em that any man with the smell of liquor on his breath will run up and down the quay for an hour carrying a hundredweight sack of rocks," Kenton said. "That's increased their appreciation of water."
Back.at the castle, with darkness almost fallen, he found Orsini and two lookouts. "Just one fisherman in sight," Orsini reported. "It's the same boat that has been out all day."
"It'll give you good practice," Ramage said. "Watch him as he comes in and it will help you judge distances."
The Calypso came in sight in the late afternoon of the third day. She was within a mile of the castle when, obviously certain by then that there was no flag flying from the flagpole, she turned seaward again.
Ramage watched the ship with his telescope and felt a glow of pride: she had a beautiful sheer and the whole shape of the hull was perfectly balanced. The fact was, he admitted to himself, that the French could build better-looking ships than the British, and if the Calypso was anything to go by, faster ones too. It would be interesting to see what became of the Trafalgar prizes. Thanks to the storm which had blown up after the battle, not many of the prizes had survived, but he regretted he did not have the seniority to be given command of one of them. From what he had seen of some of the French 74s, even though they had been mostly hidden by the smoke of the guns, they seemed fine ships: fine sheers, gunports high so that the ships could be fought with a heavy sea running, and with masts that sat in the hulls as though they belonged there.
The truth of the matter was that the French shipwrights (and Spanish too, for that matter) had perfected that curious blend of science and art that was necessary to design and build a fine ship. It was something that eluded the British shipwrights. It was a fact admitted by honest men that the fastest and most seaworthy ships in the King's service were those captured from the French and Spanish. At least the Admiralty had the honesty to keep the original names - except where they were too similar to existing English names.
There was, he considered, something very British about the way the Admiralty had kept the French and Spanish names (and Dutch and Danish too), because he could not imagine the French, for instance, retaining the English name of a ship they captured. But just think of the ships at present in commission - the 68-gun Admiral Devries and the 56-gun Alkmaar were originally Dutch; L 'Ambuscade, L'Aurore were former French frigates; then there were the Bienfaisant, Babette, Bonne Citoyenne and Bonetta which were French and the Brakel and Braave Dutch, and that only took him up to ships beginning with the letters A and B. Then came the huge Commerce de Marseille, Caton, Concorde, Courageux, Constance and Cormorant, all French, and the 74-gun Camperdown, Dutch. And so it went on, the Delft, Genereux, Gelykheid, Haarlem, Helder, Heureux, Juste (of 80 guns) and the Impetueux of 78 guns, Imperieuse, Immortalite, right through the alphabet to Vryheid, Virginie, Volage, Voltigeur and Victorieuse and the Spanish El Vincelo. The last three he could remember were Dutch - the Wassender, Wilhelmina and Woorzamheid. And there was, of course, the 110-gun Ville de Paris, built in England. Would it be possible that the French would build a four-decker and name it City of London! The British, he decided, were either very special or very stupid, and he was not at all sure which it was.
Orsini came up and reported his sleeping quarters were ready. They had swept out a small room - presumably used as a magazine - on the top of the battlements and, after making sure there were no scorpions lurking around in the semi-darkness, they had put down a mattress. Its great advantage was that a cry from one of the sentries brought him on the spot within seconds.
And now it was dark. The single small fishing boat had come back in, to be welcomed by a group of women on the quay, a sure sign of their need for fish.
He was startled to hear one of the sentries challenging someone who had come up the track from the town, and pleased to find it was the mayor and a boy carrying pots of food.
"Supper for you and your men," the mayor explained. "We thought you would have difficulty in getting a fire going up here, so my wife cooked some extra pasta. And there is bread, and water. No wine, as you said."
Ramage ate his supper with Orsini and after an hour walking right round the battlements, he went to bed, more tired than he ever was at sea: the effect, he thought drowsily, of all the walking.
He woke up next morning when the mayor and boy - he was the mayor's youngest son - brought them breakfast, a simple meal of which the main course was a chunk of heavy bread. Then Ramage set off down the hill to find Rennick and inspect the men: it would do no harm for them to know that he was keeping an eye on them.
The rest of the fourth day passed without incident. The guns' crews exercised at the carronades and the seamen practised charging the quay, watched by wide-eyed children and curious adults. The mayor, who was looking on with Ramage, was most impressed, except that he thought that the Saraceni would probably outnumber the seamen and Marines.
Ramage explained about the carronades, pointing out that the seamen and Marines would not appear on the scene until after the guns had done their best to clear the quay.
The Calypso returned on the late afternoon of the fifth day and turned away when she did not see any flag hoisted. Ramage could imagine the disappointment felt by Aitken and Southwick. Impatience rather than disappointment: they would want to get the attack over with, so that they would have no more worry. Neither of them was contented with being left out of the fight; it was in the nature of both men that they could not admit that everything would go off all right without them being present. Ramage pictured Southwick bellowing his way down the quay, whirling his great two-handed sword like a scythe cutting down wheat.
Two more days: Ramage was sure that the attack would come then, which gave the Saracens enough time to get to their bases and then back again to Licata. There was no reason to expect the enemy to be punctual: Ramage was basing his calculations on the natural urge of the Saracens to finish their raids and settle down to some peaceful feasting.
Two more days: by then the Calypsos would have been on shore a week. They would have practised handling the carronades and charging the quay enough times that they would know exactly what to do, whether in daylight or darkness. They would have that advantage over the Saracens - they would know the ground while the Saracens would be strangers. Ramage knew it was not much of an advantage because Licata was such a small town. But in the coming fight the advantage would be with the side that could add up a series of small advantages.